From the Archives: Police parking ticket sowed seeds for riots

1985 was a troubling year for the police, with riots and football hooliganism taking a fatal turn.

1985 was a troubling year for the police, with riots and football hooliganism taking a fatal turn. In the first of a two-part look at the annual report from Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear, Crime Files examines the year the city burned with the Handsworth riots.

FROM a distance, the yellow and orange glow that lit up the night sky above Birmingham 25 years ago this month had an air of surreal beauty.

But in reality it was a sign that inner-city Birmingham was alight that September 9 night in 1985.

And as buildings in Handsworth and Lozells went up in smoke, so, too, did relations between police and the city’s large black community. The next 32 hours saw an orgy of violence, with two brothers killed, shops burned to the ground, looters raiding their local stores and police under attack.

Innocent brothers Kassamali, 38, and Amirali Moledina, 44, perished in a night of violence when their post office was set alight.

As the buildings burned in Lozells Road, the looters were out in full force raiding their local shops.

A police log recorded: “An air of excitement is noticeable among the looters – one man pushing a trolley-load of stolen property shouts: ‘I’m shopping early for Christmas’.”

An inquiry into the Handsworth and Lozells riots painted a grim picture of the area as one of the most deprived in the country.

A report by the then Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear – now a Lord – told how the root causes were down to five factors: massive social deprivation, inadequate housing, unsuccessful education, mass unemployment and racial discrimination.

Writing in his annual report about those “unhappy days” the Chief Constable said: “They represented the worst riots that have been seen on the mainland of the United Kingdom for many years (though they were soon overtaken by serious rioting in Tottenham, London) and left two men dead, 122 injured (including 79 police officers) and more than £15m worth of property destroyed.

“A large number of criminal charges have yet to be dealt with in the Crown Courts and I am confident that evidence adduced there will show clearly that the riots began from the deliberate actions of a number of men who, within a short period of time, executed a plan to set fire to a building and draw the police into a confrontation in which petrol bombs were used from the very start.”

He went on: “I have maintained from the start that the police operate in an almost impossible position in areas such as Handsworth.

“Surrounded by massive social deprivation and the result of inadequate housing, unsuccessful education, mass unemployment and racial discrimination, the police are all too often seen as the only readily indentifiable representatives of local or central government and can become the target for hostility from those frustrated by the state of their society as a whole.”

The then Chief Constable acknowledged that the start of any riot or disorder “almost always involves a police officer, who may well be carrying out his duty in the most thoughtful and sensitive way possible”.

The spark was a ticket slapped on an illegally parked car. Little did the officer know his actions would lead to such death and destruction.

The vehicle had pulled up outside the Acapulco Cafe in Lozells Road, Lozells, at 4.45pm on September 9. On closer inspection the officer noticed there was no tax disc.

But it was the driver’s actions which sparked one of the worst nights of violence Birmingham has ever seen, leaving two dead and millions of pounds’ worth of damage to property. The man resisted arrest and fled into the cafe. When officers arrived to assist, they were pelted with stones, bottles and staves. Eleven were left injured and the seeds of the riot were sown. Mr Dear continued: “The debate into the Handsworth riots has often sought to ignore the fact that there was large-scale criminality involved in the widespread offences which included arson and looting.

“It is essential that the whole of society continues to work together in areas such as Handsworth in an effort to improve the position.

“They are difficult areas to live in – they are also difficult areas to police and my officers need the co-operation of all sections of the community if we are to avoid similar scenes again.”